Friday, July 30, 2010

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Jon Pertwee played the Doctor from 1970 to 1974. His episodes were the first to be broadcast in color. The Master, the Doctor's evil Time Lord nemesis, made his first appearance in a Pertwee episode.

Pertwee was also the first to wear more than one outfit. The previous Doctors always wore pretty much the same thing, but the Third Doctor was quite a clothes horse. He favored tuxedos, opera capes, frilly shirts and velvet blazers (in some pretty eye-searing 1970s colors). I drew him in the outfit I liked best.

Pertwee's Doctor was a bit more active than the previous two. He wasn't afraid to defend himself or even attack a foe, and was schooled in the art of Venusian Aikido.

The Third Doctor relied more on gadgets than the others. He drove a Whomobile (a hovercraft that looked like a typical flying car) for a time, and later a vintage roadster he nicknamed "Bessie."

The Third Doctor was put on trial by his fellow Time Lords and exiled to Earth. This helped the ever-frugal BBC to save money on the show's budget, by not having to build a new alien planet set each week.

He's also known for the catchphrase, "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow," but what's odd is that it wasn't uttered nearly as much as people think. According to some sources, he only said it on air twice! I'm not sure how that line became so identified with him.

The Third Doctor was also the first to team up with his previous incarnations (in an episode called "The Three Doctors"), something the show's done several times over the years. When faced with a threat he couldn't handle alone, the Third Doctor used the Tardis to go back in time and pick up his previous two incarnations to help him out. A cool idea, and a fun way to see the previous Doctors in action again.

Doctor #3 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign. I'm having a lot of fun working in this simpler vector style.

Stay tuned for Doctors #4 through #11!

Here's the first sketch I did of Doctor #3. I drew this from memory. Yikes! Let this be a lesson to you, kids, don't be afraid to use reference photos!

Here's sketch #2, drawn from reference photos. Jon Pertwee had a distinctive-looking mouth (well, he did), so getting that just right was key to drawing a good likeness of him.